From: Terry W. Colvin (fortean1@mindspring.com)
Date: Fri Apr 25 2003 - 21:34:22 MDT
I missed U.S. tv news coverage except a snippet of CNN International here and
there while overseas in Thailand and Cambodia from 27 March through 19 April.
Terry
MRC Alert: Special Report 'Grading TV's War News'
Teddy Roosevelt once observed, "It is not the critic who counts, not the one
who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might
have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the
arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood; who strives
valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great
enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who,
if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, if he fails, at
least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with
those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."
***Media Research Center CyberAlert Special***
3:10am CDT, Thursday April 24, 2003
MRC Special Report. "Grading TV's War News: Fox News Channel and Embedded
Reporters Excelled, While Peter Jennings and Peter Arnett Flunked."
As promised yesterday, below is the Executive Summary of the report by Rich
Noyes, Director of Research at the MRC, and myself, Brent Baker, the MRC's
Vice President. But first, the list of grades and assessments we issued:
War Report Card
Networks:
Fox News Channel: B
CBS: B-
NBC/MSNBC: C+
CNN: C+
ABC: D-
Anchors:
Brit Hume: A
Wolf Blitzer: B+
Dan Rather: B+
Shepard Smith: B+
Tom Brokaw: B
Aaron Brown: B-
Brian Williams: B-
Peter Jennings: F
Embedded Reporters:
Best:
1. NBC's David Bloom
2. CNN's Walter Rodgers
3. FNC's Greg Kelly
Worst:
ABC's Ted Koppel
Baghdad Reporters:
Best:
John Burns for CBS
Worst:
1. Peter Arnett for NBC and MSNBC
2. Richard Engel for ABC
END List of Grades
Now, the text of the Executive Summary for the April 23 Special Report:
While it only lasted about three weeks, the second Gulf War was an
unqualified success. But what about TV coverage of the war? While the media
covered many aspects of the war fairly well-reports from embedded
journalists were refreshingly factual and were mostly devoid of
commentary-television's war news was plagued by the same problems detected
during previous conflicts: too little skepticism of enemy propaganda, too
much mindless negativism about America's military prospects, and a
reluctance on the part of most networks to challenge the premises of the
anti-war movement or expose its radical agenda.
Media Research Center analysts watched the war on ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN
and the Fox News Channel. Here are their grades for each network's
performance, followed by ratings for the best and worst network anchors,
Baghdad reporters and embedded correspondents:
Grading the Networks: Fox News Channel (B) and CBS News (B-)
received the best grades for war coverage that correctly portrayed the U.S.
military effort as successful. FNC aided viewers by rejecting the standard
liberal idea that objective war news requires an indifference to whether
America succeeds or fails. Day after day, CBS's Pentagon reporter David
Martin gave the most accurate overview of the war's progress, although
others at CBS, such as Lesley Stahl, exhibited a tendency for unwarranted
second-guessing. FNC's final grade suffered after Geraldo Rivera disclosed
the location and mission of the 101st Airborne with whom he'd been traveling.
In contrast, ABC received a near-failing grade (D-) for knee-jerk negativism
that played up Iraqi claims of civilian suffering, hyped American military
difficulties and indulged anti-war protesters with free air time. One ABC
reporter (Chris Cuomo) even promoted anti-war leftists as "prescient
indicators of the national mood," even though polls showed most Americans
supported the war.
Many of the same correspondents appeared on both NBC and MSNBC, so the
networks were graded as a team (C+). Both generally offered solid, factual
coverage, especially from their strong embedded reporters, but their anchors
weren't as strong as those on FNC and CBS, and both were marred by their use
of Peter Arnett as a Baghdad reporter. Like ABC, CNN's coverage (C+) was
tainted by unwarranted negativity and inordinate amount of coverage of
anti-war groups, although these weaknesses were offset by a stronger pool of
embedded reporters and more skeptical coverage of the Iraqi regime.
Grading the Anchors: All of the network anchors received high
grades except for the highly tendentious Peter Jennings, who played up any
defeatist angle he could find. Five days before Baghdad fell, Pentagon
reporter John McWethy warned, "This could be, Peter, a long war." Jennings
felt vindication: "As many people had anticipated."
Dan Rather's impressions of a successful U.S. drive to Baghdad were more
accurate than Jennings's pessimism, while NBC's Tom Brokaw, ever the steady
hand, usually struck a middle ground between the two. On cable, CNN's
daytime anchor Wolf Blitzer was solid and fair; nighttime anchor Aaron Brown
was more equivocal and self-conscious. On the war's third day, MSNBC's Brian
Williams unfortunately compared our precision bombing with the citywide
destruction wrought by the Allied bombing of Dresden in World War II, but he
rejected the same analogy in a later report. Fox's Brit Hume provided an
excellent one-hour summary of the war each night, while Shepard Smith kept
the spotlight on the battlefield and Fox's embedded correspondents.
Embedded Reporters: These reporters excelled when they acted as
the viewers' eyes and ears in Iraq. NBC's David Bloom, in his innovative
Bloommobile, was the star of the group, offering hours of riveting live
coverage of the Third Infantry's historic drive toward Baghdad, including a
powerful sandstorm that turned day into night. CNN's Walter Rodgers narrated
hour upon hour of armored troop movements, often under enemy fire, without
straying from his "just the facts" style, while FNC's Greg Kelly provided
gripping footage of the U.S. Army's devastating first thrust into Baghdad.
On the other hand, ABC's Ted Koppel spent his time pontificating as if
he-not the vast military force that surrounded him ? was the real star.
"Forget the easy victories of the last twenty years; this war is more like
the ones we knew before," he announced at the end of Nightline on March 24.
"Telling you if and when things are going badly for U.S. troops, enabling
you to bear witness to the high cost of war, is the hard part of our job,"
he promised viewers, "We'll do our very best to give you the truth in the
hope and the belief that you can handle it."
Baghdad Reporters: Until the Iraqi dictatorship ran away April
9, Baghdad-based reporters were controlled by the Ministry of Information.
Given the impediments to accurate reporting, networks should have used such
reporters sparingly. Instead, ABC gave a great deal of time to the
uncorroborated stories of civilian suffering which freelancer Richard Engel
reported. While he was still under the watchful eye of Iraqi minders, on the
April 2 World News Tonight, Engel highlighted the claim that the U.S. had
bombed a "maternity hospital."
National Geographic Explorer's Peter Arnett, who was heavily used by MSNBC
and NBC before he was fired, was the most outrageously biased Baghdad
reporter. On March 26, days before he went on Iraqi TV to bolster Saddam's
spin, Arnett twice told those watching NBC's Today of Iraqi claims that the
U.S. had used "cluster bombs" to kill dozens at a Baghdad marketplace, a
claim later rebutted by NBC's Pentagon reporter Jim Miklaszewski. Arnett's
servile approach to the Iraqis was in stark contrast to the New York Times's
John Burns, who phoned in several reports to CBS. Burns did his best to
expose the Iraqi propaganda.
-- Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1@mindspring.com > Alternate: < fortean1@msn.com > Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html > Sites: * Fortean Times * Mystic's Haven * TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program ------------ Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >[Vietnam veterans, Allies, CIA/NSA, and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.]
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